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Surviving the Retail Shift

Looking Ahead: Lessons Learned.

Part Five of a Five-Part Series.

As Mark Twain quipped, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." So too is the reported retail "apocalypse" and "death" of the shopping center. In fact, U.S. retailers opened 1,326 more locations in 2017 than they closed. When restaurants are added to the mix, there were a total of 4,080 new openings in 2017 and another 5,050 openings planned this year.

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The retail industry has faced significant challenges this past year. In 2017, more than 5,000 retail stores closed their doors, many of them portfolio-wide closures by well-known department-store chains that were synonymous with the traditional shopping mall. Toys R Us recently joined a growing list of more than 35 retailers that filed for bankruptcy in 2017, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Even more unsettling, Bankruptcydata.com reports that the Toys R Us bankruptcy is the third largest retail bankruptcy of all time.

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